Kushner (He Dreams of Rivers) resuscitated this work from notebooks completed in the mid-'80s—a time when his father died, he drove away the man he loved and he realized that he was "Horrors, old and gay!" Descriptive, wistful, sometimes fanciful and painfully frank, Kushner's poems describe human desperation and acceptance in clean, inclusive and oblique sweeps: "In the end/ you will utter again: Yes! I remember. Was/ playing in a garden, in the sounds, you charming/ secret things, a fart in his Italian corduroys & from/ somewhere Schubert. I forgive nobody the light it/ leave at that. To state the worst, perfectly. It/ will end never end." (July)
